Blog Assignment #4

One of the most important parts of being an educator is having the ability to ask not just good, but effective questions. I like Ben Johnson's definition of the goal of a question in The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom. He says to ask yourself a question, "What does a teacher asking questions of a class expect the class to learn from the questioning process?" Johnson says, "...we need to come to grips with the fact that we do not know everything, and there is no reason to assume that students know nothing." I think this is a powerful statement because some times teachers get consumed by what they are teaching that some times they do not pay attention to who they are teaching. We need to remember that we are not teaching for us, we are teaching to help benefit the students.

According to Maryellen Weimer, PhD there are Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom. The first step is to prepare the question. You should do this for the same reason you prepare a lesson plan, it helps you explain better and you already know what kind of answer you are expecting. The second step is to play with questions. Questions are the most powerful when they engage the students. The third step is to preserve good questions. This way, you will have questions prepared for the next class to refresh their memory.

The Teaching Center has a lot of strategies to use when Asking Questions to Improve Learning. Some of the strategies include when planning questions, you must stay focused on what your objectives are. You must avoid leading questions that hint to its answer. Another strategy is when asking a yes or no question, you can follow up with another question asking the students to explain their answer. Another good strategy is when having a class discussion, be sure you only ask one question at a time, this way students do not get confused of off track from the main objective. Teaching Center also has a list of good strategies to respond effectively. For example, do not interrupt a students when he or she is answering a question.